Few developments in the history of medicine have had such a profound effect upon human life and society as the development of the power to control infections due to microorganisms.
Although true antibiotics were recognized in folk medicine as long as 2500 years ago when the Chinese reported the medicinally beneficial effects of moldy bean curd, it was not until the nineteenth century when Pasteur founded the science of bacteriology that these substances were studied systematically. Since that time, the pace of new discoveries has accelerated with many new and important antibiotics belonging to various groups of compounds being discovered in the nineteenth century.
Although several thousand antibiotics are known, only a relative handful have reached the market and achieved commercial importance. Only a very few, perhaps 0.3% of the many antibiotics mentioned in the scientific literature, are now used in medicine and agriculture. A continuing need exists, therefore, for selective and effective antibiotics that do not easily produce resistance, show an absence of toxicity to the kidney, liver and central nervous system and which are easily administered in oral or parenteral forms. The present invention addresses this need and other needs.